I recommend to you all a book called The Power of Two (Carl Brewer’s Battle with Hockey’s Power Brokers) by Susan Foster. It’s at your bookstore and is a must read.

I hated Carl Brewer.

He was a Toronto Maple Leaf and for this Habs fan, it didn’t get any lower down the evolutionary chain than that!

I met Carl and his partner Sue Foster at the CKNW studio on the old Expo site in Vancouver preparatory to an interview. By the time we got through the chat before the interview I admired and indeed loved the guy – and his partner. Here was a couple taking on the National Hockey League and the most powerful sports figure Alan Eagleson.

The issue was simple – The National Hockey League, in cahoots with Eagleson, stole huge sums from the players’ fund so that they were getting peanuts back from what had been sold to them as a gold plated pension plan. There was no subtle trickery here that only a fiscal nerd could uncover – they just nicked the money.

By the time this was over Alan Eagleson was in jail, disbarred (he may have quit just in time) and had lost his Order of Canada. The League, which did everything possible to “money whip” Carl and Sue, had to cough up $50 million which was still miles short of what it should have been.

Another hero of the piece is Russ Conway who broke the story, would you believe, in a newspaper near Boston!

My role was inconsequential but interviewing Carl and Sue and in laying the wood on the RCMP and the sports media for not uncovering and prosecuting this matter, earned me the venomous dislike of the local jocks, a dislike I wore most proudly indeed.

The book also tells about how the current players’ and their union leader Bob Goodenow, turned their backs on Carl and Sue.

The story has all the drama of a great crime story – which it was. It’s also a great love story – a love that continues past Carl’s untimely death in 2001.

I’m proud to have had the opportunity to be marginally involved in this case, a case which involved two tough, courageous, and deeply loving people up against the Canadian Establishment.

Yes, I even forgave Carl, a truly great man, for being a damn Toronto Maple Leaf!

Buy the book!